Heavens to Betsy! Had a scare last night and this morning, just in the midst of boss-induced stress going on at work, so I thought "D*mn, I really can't face having an emergency medical situation right now." And, I think I'm very blessed because I now don't think I have anything wrong...but I'm still not sure and I'm shaken up and hope that this post will help others to NOT freak out if a similar thing ever happens to you.

Yesterday afternoon, last night and this morning, I had what I thought was clearly blood in both my stool and urine, and I mean, BLOOD. I'm still not totally convinced that it wasn't, but I'm now hopeful, having put two and two together, plus then Googling and learning about "Beeturia", that indeed I am in the rare 10% to 14% of the population ( what else is new) that gets this upon...drum roll, please: eating beets. Not that I ate whole beets, but my HFS had a sale on these "Sweets and Beets" sweet potato chips. They are basically just sweet potato chips but while some of them are the sweet potato color, some have beet juice added to color them purple. The HFS virtually never has these on sale, yet this week they DO, and they are one of the few truly compliant (or nearly so, except for the oils they use) chips out there in Chip Land, so of course you just know that P-Twist here bought out the dang store, right?

Ate some the other day and didn't notice anything but then ate a BUNCH yesterday at lunchtime. Now, again, this is not eating a whole beet but the ingredients of the chips are as follows:

Since beets are the second ingredient, I assume there is a significant amount of beet in there.

Anyway: duuuudes, this freaked me OUT. I mean, it looks like blood in both my stool and urine, BIG TIME! I immediately did put two and two together about the beets but still I was freaked and remain a tad freaked because, again: it REALLY seems more like blood than anything else (won't go into graphic detail--just trust me).

Anyway, so I'm giving it another day or so and, of course, laying off the "sweets and beets" chips until I figure out what is what here.

But why am I always in the weird-BLEEP minority of people in this world?

"Beeturia is passing of red or pink urine after eating beets. It affects 10-14% of the population. While some believe it to be an autosomal recessive trait, it has been shown that individuals differ over time in having beeturia."

"...this phenomenon, known as beeturia, occurs only in about 10-14% of people. The doctor questioned his patient and found that he had in fact eaten beetroot on both days in question. The color of the patient's urine returned to normal when he did not eat beetroot. He was advised that beeturia is a harmless occurrence and that, even though beetroot colored his urine, he did not need to exclude the vegetable from his diet."

"Anecdotal observations scattered throughout the literature have often provided clues to underlying variations in humans' ability to handle dietary chemicals. Beetroot, the red root of the garden beet used extensively as a food source, is known to produce red urine in some people following its ingestion, whereas others appear to be able to eat the vegetable with impunity."

"It has also been suggested that beeturia is linked with food allergies and malabsorption syndromes, with a higher incidence of beeturia being found among those with iron deficiency anemia and patients receiving treatment for pernicious anemia (Zindler and Colovos, 1950; Watson et al., 1963; Tunnessen et al., 1969). Only in 1999 was it suggested that beeturia could be used as a simple screening test for hemochromatosis (Sotos, 1999). However, such an association has been contested following the failure to demonstrate a correlation between serum iron levels in schoolboys, half of whom were anemic, and beeturia (Forrai et al., 1971). Nevertheless, these may be situations wherein pathological changes in gut permeability enhance pigment absorption and subsequent excretion into the urine."

Duuudes: freaked me RIGHT out...but now I'm 99% sure it is just the dang beets, diamond superfoods that they are!

So if you eat some whole beets or a product containing beets as a main ingredient, and then you see what you think is blood in your stool and/or urine, don't be scared. It's just the beets. Discontinue the beets immediately and see if all returns to normal. If it does, fine, you can eat beets again, too, as this is harmless. If it does not, go to your doctor immediately to get checked out. I'm really hoping mine is Beeturia because I am NOT a going-to-the-doctor person. Haven't been in over two years, in fact, and I'm not sure I'm even considered an active patient on my doctor's rolls anymore, which is fine with me because I can't stand her. I need to pick out a new doctor but, wackadoo that I am, I have been putting it off. Which is a bad idea, in case you ever have an emergency. An emergency is NOT the time you want to be looking up doctors on your insurance list and checking them out, etc. These days, they make you come in for a "meet and greet" appointment before they even will schedule you for an actual exam--at least, on our insurance plan, most of them do. It is all a racket so that they can charge another visit. But meanwhile, if you are bleeding out or unable to function due to vertigo or WHATEVER, good luck waiting weeks or months to finally be examined. And, goodness knows, you don't want to go to an "urgent care" facility--perish the thought! So, do as I say, not as I do, when it comes to staying active on your primary care doctor's roster. Meanwhile, back at the inn, I think I'm fine and just have "beeturia" and also in ye olde stools. How scary looking! But if it ever happens to you, before freaking out, ask yourself if you had any beets.

Always in the tiniest minority* of the population, OUT!

* I mean, let's review:

Nonnie (15% of population)INFJ (1% of population)Beeturia (10% to 14% of population)Unitarian Universalist and Jewish (you don't see that combo every day...so let's go with 0.000001% of the population)More liberal than even exists on the standard political spectrum (let's say 2% of population)On Genotype Diet (how many of us are there?)

I could go on...my kingdom to be in the majority on SOMETHING!

"If you are on one of Dr. D's diets and it isn't joyful, you aren't doing it right."- moi

Same thing here........eat beets............beet color stool, comes out in the urine too if I eat enough. also stool looks somewhat like coffee grinds. now THAT freaked me out. but it is all related to beets. I ate the whole ones. and lots of them.

It freaked me right on out last night, I don't mind telling youzzz. I had myself convinced I was no doubt on my deathbed until I thought of the beet ingredient in those sweet potato chips. Even then, I decided I was in denial because I didn't want to take time off today to go to the doctor--not to mention, I didn't want to go to the doctor, period, time off or no time off. But once I Googled a little this fine a.m., I felt comforted that it was probably the beet. *Whew*

Needless to say, no chips for me today, even though I have a ton left in my cubicle stash-o-food. I am currently dining on a roast beef sandwich on a millet and flax hamburger bun, with lettuce, tomato and possibly also mayo and Vermont cheddar (what? Lola I ain't! We can't all be perfect, peeps! ). No more beets 'til I figure out that I'm for sure okay! But once I do, then I will add 'em back, because they are trey, trey good for a body.

"If you are on one of Dr. D's diets and it isn't joyful, you aren't doing it right."- moi

P.S. Off topic but I was looking at my original post and noticed something, so I just checked the "sweets and beets" label again, and I realized that the Terra company does not have their ingredients accurately represented on the "sweets and beets" label because it does not say anything about "salt" and, trust a salt addict here, they have salt on them. If they didn't, I would have had to ADD sea salt (have that in the trusty cubicle, too, of COURSE!). Plus, it says they contain 35 mg of sodium. Now, I ask you! Conclusion: they contain salt, but the ingredients label does not list it. BAD.

"If you are on one of Dr. D's diets and it isn't joyful, you aren't doing it right."- moi

I wrote a blog about it a long time ago... all 3 menfolk in my family have the red urine after eating beets. I have had red stools on occasion as well... but not every time. So I think it is more common than the 10-14% figure. Very few people I know eat beets though so perhaps that skews the percentage to a lower number.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. There are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Me too. I am deathly afraid of raw beet juice now. Guess I OD'd on it once. Instant throat constriction, hoarse voice, neck ache and total body sweat. Didn't know what it was at the time, I blamed it on the ginger in my juice, but after investigating it a bit, found out it was the beets! I had it many times before that with no reaction so now I am very careful with the amount I use in my juices. Also, I produce colourful stool (not urine) every time I eat cooked beets.

I'm just glad I remembered the beet-laden sweet potato chips. Otherwise, I might be in the primary-care-doctor-from-h*ll's1 office right now, and none of us wants that.

Any health practitioner worth their salt will ask if you have eaten any beets recently with a concern about possible blood in the urine.

In fact, interesting little side note... the former husband did have bright red urine when he hadn't eaten any beets. I called our doctor right away (as most good wives do for their husbands ) and the first question she asked was "Has he eaten any beets lately?" I said "No, but it looks like he has". He went in for a urine test and low and behold it was blood. Come to find out he has a condition known as post infectious nephritis which is a benign affliction that some men have where blood shows up in the urine 10-14 days after the onset of a viral infection. But... even more so... subsequent urine tests showed that he had persistent blood in his urine on the microscopic level... with no known cause. Kidneys, bladder... everything fine with the urinary tract.

But being the insightful man that he is, he realized a connection to a childhood trauma... as a young boy when his dad would hit him, he would wet his pants. He worked and processed around this painful memory and the amount of red blood cells and cell casts in his urine samples began to dramatically decrease. He also made sure he was well hydrated and over a period of time... several years... he finally now has urine free of blood.

So as a synopsis... even if it was blood in the urine, doesn't necessarily mean there is a medical event happening. And the etiology can be several causes simultaneously. We human beings are complex creatures, after all.....

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. There are many ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Any health practitioner worth their salt will ask if you have eaten any beets recently with a concern about possible blood in the urine.

Mine is definitely NOT worth her salt. In fact, I'm pretty sure she eats a sodium-free diet, judging by what a stick she is and how she feels I should weigh 126 lbs (yeah, that'll happen). Anyway, don't get me started. I'm just glad I didn't have to go see her. I've been meaning to pick out a new primary care physician, but I haven't gotten around to it, which is stupid. If you have health insurance at all, you should at least get that yearly check-up so that you are considered an active patient in case you have an emergency situation. I found that out the hard way long about 2006-ish, when I had the vertigo that thankfully was ultimately determined to be due to a double ear infection. ANYWAY: my primary care is a doo-doo head, not to put too fine a point on it. The ones I pick out always are. I have yet to find a non-doo-doo head in the bunch. So it is hard to psych myself into jumping back into the primary care sea to fish for a new one.

"If you are on one of Dr. D's diets and it isn't joyful, you aren't doing it right."- moi

I've had it too!I expect changes in the stool, but this one is weird as the urine gets it.

BTW, aren't beets a dot for us gatherers? It's one thing I miss. I think sweet potatoes are, too.I just checked the book. Yep, they are polka-dotted!

But I plan to eat sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving! So there!!I can't have the stuffing(wheat) cranberry sauce(sugar), pumpkin pie(sugar, wheat. etc.), so I'll have those dotted sweeties!!!!Cheerio,Mrs "T" O+

Mrs. T, last Thanksgiving I started a Holiday food thread. I don't know if it's findable now, but I had a lot of compliant recipes there. I don't know if they ever made it into the database or not. But I had a stuffing recipe and cranberry sauce and I think a pumpkin pie too, but I'm not sure. If you make them yourself you don't have to risk getting sick.

At Thanksgiving I always volunteer to bring the dishes I know are easy to tweak and others will still consider them edible.

ISTJ, BTD since 5/05. Battling chronic Lyme disease since ~1985.

"Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial..." I Corinthians 6:12

BTW, aren't beets a dot for us gatherers? It's one thing I miss. ...I just checked the book. Yep, they are polka-dotted!

Wing! I just checked the book because I thought, surely Mrs. T. is wrong, they are not only a superfood for Gatherers but a diamond superfood at that. Well: NOT! You are right. They are a black-dot TTA. Wild. How did I get diamond SF from black-dot TTA? The mind boggles.

Okay, well, good thing that the HFS never usually has these on sale, because they are usually too rich for my blood, price-wise, and now that I find out they are also too something or somethings, plural, for my genotype, the heck with 'em. I will eat the remaining bag* at my leisure, but after that, THEY ARE DEAD TO ME!

* edited to add: correction - I still have one and a half bags of the things to get through. But then, DEAD TO ME!

"If you are on one of Dr. D's diets and it isn't joyful, you aren't doing it right."- moi